Replacing the 1Tb Hd of the mac mini with 256gb Ssd

Hello
I bought a new mac mini last week and im planning to replace the hd with an Ssd ( crucial m4 256gb)
My question is: how can i restore the software (mountain lion) from the hd to the new ssd? Is there a way?

Hello
I bought a new mac mini last week and im planning to replace the hd with an Ssd ( crucial m4 256gb)
My question is: how can i restore the software (mountain lion) from the hd to the new ssd? Is there a way?

Thank you

Click to expand...

By restore do you mean copy the OS and current contents or just a fresh install? You could probably just do a fresh install if you put the SSD in a cheap external enclosure. You could definitely do a fresh install if you put the SSD inside in the second drive bay. It really only takes a cable, some rubber stoppers and hd mountain screws. And there are kits from OWC to do that.

By restore do you mean copy the OS and current contents or just a fresh install? You could probably just do a fresh install if you put the SSD in a cheap external enclosure. You could definitely do a fresh install if you put the SSD inside in the second drive bay. It really only takes a cable, some rubber stoppers and hd mountain screws. And there are kits from OWC to do that.

Click to expand...

It doesn't even take that. It just takes the cable. I had a 2011 Base Mini that I added an SSD to and just left the SSD "floating" on top of the hard drive. It ran like that for a year until I sold it (and tore out the SSD as well as the cable). I just recently purchased a 2012 quad core and in went the same cable and the SSD again "floats" above the HD. Since SSD's do not spin, they do not vibrate (thus no need for the rubber grommets) and are more or less shock proof so even if you move the mini and jostle it while turned on (not really sure why you would do that) the SSD will be more than fine.

It doesn't even take that. It just takes the cable. I had a 2011 Base Mini that I added an SSD to and just left the SSD "floating" on top of the hard drive. It ran like that for a year until I sold it (and tore out the SSD as well as the cable). I just recently purchased a 2012 quad core and in went the same cable and the SSD again "floats" above the HD. Since SSD's do not spin, they do not vibrate (thus no need for the rubber grommets) and are more or less shock proof so even if you move the mini and jostle it while turned on (not really sure why you would do that) the SSD will be more than fine.

Purchase the cable and you will be fine.

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Isnt the price difference between the cable and the whole kit like 5-7 bucks?

What I did was got a cheap usb 3.0 enclosure with my SSD. Put the SSD in the enclosure and plugged it into my Mini. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the factory 1TB drive over to the SSD drive. I then set my boot drive to the SSD to ensure everything was working correctly. After that I just put the SSD in the Mini and moved the 1TB drive to the enclosure to use as a storage drive. Took me about an hour to do the whole thing.

By restore do you mean copy the OS and current contents or just a fresh install? You could probably just do a fresh install if you put the SSD in a cheap external enclosure. You could definitely do a fresh install if you put the SSD inside in the second drive bay. It really only takes a cable, some rubber stoppers and hd mountain screws. And there are kits from OWC to do that.

Click to expand...

I mean take out the HD which originaly has the mountain lion software and replace it with the SSD drive which i bought and its empty
how can i install the mountain lion software to my empty ssd drive from the HD?

I mean take out the HD which originaly has the mountain lion software and replace it with the SSD drive which i bought and its empty
how can i install the mountain lion software to my empty ssd drive from the HD?

Click to expand...

Just do the drive swap then use Internet Recovery to format drive and install OSX on SSD.

I've also been thinking of adding an SSD to an MBP and possibly my Mac Mini.

Is it possible to simply install the SSD and then transfer everything from a bootable clone of the internal drive that resides on an external volume? I'm not interested in doing a clean install; I just want to be able to move everything from the external clone.

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